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Saturday, September 27, 2014

Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful #1) : Review

Abby Abernathy is a good girl. She doesn’t drink or swear, and she has the appropriate number of cardigans in her wardrobe. Abby believes she has enough distance from the darkness of her past, but when she arrives at college with her best friend, her path to a new beginning is quickly challenged by Eastern University’s Walking One-Night Stand.

Travis Maddox, lean, cut, and covered in tattoos, is exactly what Abby wants—and needs—to avoid. He spends his nights winning money in a floating fight ring, and his days as the ultimate college campus charmer. Intrigued by Abby’s resistance to his appeal, Travis tricks her into his daily life with a simple bet. If he loses, he must remain abstinent for a month. If Abby loses, she must live in Travis’s apartment for the same amount of time. Either way, Travis has no idea that he has met his match.

I really really tried to get through this book. I wanted to finish it because so many people seemed to really like but I couldn't. It was way too sappy and I don't like sappy. On top of that the story was just ridiculous.

Travis is the bad boy and I like a bad boy character as much as the next girl but he was just so typical. Abby is the good girl and she spends the first half of the book being such an idiot and being completely oblivious to what's happening around her. The characters felt very two dimensional. Their relationship was also very much insta-love in disguise. At this point, I was seriously considering giving up but I continued in hopes that it would get better. It didn't.

Once they finally got together, Travis turned into this macho he-man who felt this strong urge to protect Abby 24/7. Ugh! I was like "Dude, let the girl breathe!" And Abby finds herself baby-ing Travis and constantly reassuring him that she isn't going to leave. Blah! Blah! Blah!

There's a scene in the book when a guy, Jenks, makes a comment about Abby and Travis isn't happy about it. He's raging but Abby gets him to not do anything stupid. Jenks makes another comment about Abby and Travis' relationship and Abby is all "teach him some manners, baby" and Travis goes and beats up Jenks. Jenks' body is lying limp on the floor, as per the description in the book, and no one is doing anything and his team mates are just standing their shaking their heads. His body is LIMP on the floor and all you do is shake your head? Really? Travis literally beat this guy unconscious and no one is doing anything about it. There are zero consequences. The most that happens is a lunch lady comes out after hearing the commotion and Travis says a sorry in passing to her. That's it. But this wasn't even the worst of it. The breaking point came after Travis leaves the lunch room to cool down. He's still really riled up and finds out that people are continuing to make comments about Abby in the cafeteria and Abby, having followed him out, decides that there is only one thing that can stop him now. She proceeds to jump on him and kiss him. Problem solved. Seriously? Reading that, all I could think was "this didn't really just happen" and "this is so stupid!" For whatever reason I decided to push through a little longer and now we're at a party where some guys are trying to buy Abby and her friend America a drink. They refuse and buy their own drinks. Travis comes and gets mad because he thinks Abby let someone buy her drink and he's like "I've told you a million times not to let someone get you your drink" and refuses to listen to anything anyone is saying. A few moments later he punches a guy who was hitting on Abby and Abby gets knocked over from that punch too because the guy was holding on to her and now she's mad at Travis and he says to her "I'm going to fuck up, I'm going to fuck up a lot but you have to forgive me."

This was definitely a rant but there were just so many stupid, idiotic things happening in this book and I needed to let it out. I do not understand why this book has such a high rating and why people are swooning over Travis Maddox.

I had such high expectations for this boo, especially considering how it tops so many lists on Goodreads. I was so disappointed because the characters were a major turn-off for me.

I actually liked Eleanor and Park (hehe) and I didn't mind their relationship pace because it wasn't intense and also because they were really young. To me, that quick love kind of thing is reasonable when the characters are 15 and it's first love but not when you're in college. It just seems much less realistic and unreasonable, not to mention unbelievable, when the characters are in their 20s.

Thanks for checking out my review :D and also sorry for replying so late.